Batman: Arkham City – Harley Quinn’s Revenge review – puddin’ time

Last year’s superhero hit gets its fist slice of downloadable story content, with a brand new epilogue featuring Robin and The Joker’s very angry girlfriend.

Batman: Arkham City – Harley Quinn’s Revenge (360) – no joke

There might have been some minor fan disappointment with the finale of Batman: Arkham City but the Dark Knight himself seems to have been the most upset about it all. We won’t spoil what happened, but if you play this new downloadable mission you’ll certainly ruin what was a fairly shocking ending to one of last year’s very best games.

Although there was a great deal of downloadable content released for Arkham City last year all of it was based around the non-story led challenge maps and extra character skins. This though is a fully-fledged epilogue, and although it does reuse a lot of the previous locations there’s no skimping on the series’ top notch dialogue and voice acting.

Since we can’t say too much about the specifics of the story we’ll confirm only the obvious: that Harley Quinn, The Joker’s quasi-girlfriend, is the main villain of the piece. The story begins with you in control of Robin (Tim Drake in his hoodie if you want to be specific), who’s been called in by Oracle to look for Batman after he went missing trying to rescue some cops.

Robin (and Nightwing) were both playable via downloadable content/pre-order bonuses in the original game, but again only in the challenge maps. This always seems a shame because, like Catwoman before them, they each have a similar but noticeably different range of gadgets and moves.

Robin uses a collapsible bo staff as his main weapon but also has a recharging bullet shield, and instead of bringing enemies towards him with his grappling hook uses it to launch himself feet first into them.

Eventually the story shows you want happened to Batman and lets you control him until events catch up with Robin again and then switch back to Bats for the final showdown. Depending on how well you remember the controls there’s a good two or three hours of entertainment here, with the game taking place inside the Steel Mill from the first game and a sizeable area of Gotham around it.

There’s no unlocking of extra moves, or new Riddler puzzles, though and you can’t explore any of the larger open world. But there are some special Harley Quinn balloons to pop if you want to obsess over some new collectables.

There also isn’t anything really new in terms of gameplay or level design. There are some redesigned enemies but none that actually behave differently than before, which given the price and length of the game doesn’t necessarily make this the best value around.

But it’s hard to feel conned when the game’s mechanics and sheer craftsmanship are this well honed. As this download proves stalking bad guys from the shadows never gets old and there’s always a dozen different ways to take them out, whether you’re in an enclosed area or bat-grappling around outside.

If you don’t like sneaking around you will miss out on the best stuff, since stalking enemies from the rafters or from beneath the floor grating upon which they walk has never been handled better in any other comparable title. Even though this isn’t technically a stealth game.

The combat too is superbly visceral and varied, mining a seemingly endless number of actions and takedowns out of simple, single button attack, counter, and stun moves.

If you’ve never played Arkham City then we commend both it and its predecessor Arkham Asylum to you without hesitation. And as long as you don’t mind that this is simply more of the same then we suggest you download this afterwards too – or perhaps wait for the game of the year edition that’s coming out soon and which also includes Harley Quinn’s Revenge.

The only other question then is whether this download hints at a further game in the series. But to be honest we’re really not sure. By the end Harley Quinn’s story is wrapped up fairly neatly but there’s a moment early on with Commissioner Gordon where he refers to needing your help with an ‘other matter’. Arkham City left at least one major villain on the loose, but if Gordon’s referring to that it’s not clear.

There’s also some visual references to Project Cadmus from the wider DC Universe but we couldn’t say for certain whether that was in the original game or not.

Whether it’s from developer Rocksteady or not there obviously will be more Batman games, but for now we’re content to wait and see how the chips fall. For now Arkham City remains the best superhero game ever made and, despite not offering anything truly new, this is one of the best slices of downloadable content too.

In Short:More of the same has rarely been so welcome, with this unusually elaborate, if still obviously reheated, download.

Pros:Robin plays great and the switching focus of the narrative works well. Same great dialogue and voiceovers as always. Combat and stealth elements still manage to thrill.

Cons:No genuinely new gameplay elements, especially if you’ve already played as Robin before. A seasoned Arkahm City player could plough through the download in two hours or less.